From Swakopmund we headed north and camped one night each at Spitzkoppe and Twyfelfontein. Spitzkoppe was an impressive granite mountain and we had a really nice camp amongst the over size boulders at the base. We also climbed up to have a look at some bushman rock paintings in a place called Bushman’s Paradise. It was quite a surprise as you came over a crest of bare granite and a big grassy valley opened up in front of you surrounded in all sides by high walls of granite. From the ground there was no indication that there was anything up there except a lump of bare rock. The paintings weren’t all that spectacular, but the area was certainly worth the climb.
Twyfelfontein is famous for Bushman stone engravings which were pretty interesting and well preserved. More interesting was the Texas cut pork steak we had for dinner that night. Take a decent size leg ham, cut an inch thick steak across the front of it, throw in a bit or marinade and flame grill on the camp fire you are pretty much right. It was probably enough to feed half a dozen people but we knocked most of it off and are now looking for another one! It was great – probably the tastiest cut of meat we have found so far, and we have tried a few……
On the subject of food we have noticed a few interesting names for the local culinary delights. Heading the pack, and vying for the title of dodgiest names, are Monkey Gland Sauce, Salticrax Biscuits and Wimpy Burger. Wimpy burger has it for sheer numbers (there are stores nearly everywhere), but I think Monkey Gland Sauce is still the winner so far. It is a bit sweet and goes well on Boerwoers (sausages).
Once we managed to haul our distended stomachs out of bed after the pork binge we headed to Etosha for three nights and the park didn’t disappoint. The floodlit waterholes are each camp were a highlight and we spent hours each evening sitting watching the comings and goings whilst nursing a beer or rum and coke. We saw quite a few black rhino, rarer and smaller than the white rhino we saw at Kruger, and watched a great stand-off between a rhino and a large bull elephant. Moral of that story is don’t pick a fight with a rhino! Even though he was probably several tonnes underweight he wasn’t backing up an inch and in the end the elephant gave up and wandered off. We were also lucky enough to find a leopard sleeping beside the road whilst driving around. He moved off the road when we stopped but only went a couple of meters into the bush and lay down again. He was happy to just sit there, but took a more active interest in things when Nicole climbed out of the window a bit to get a better view. She got back in the car again pretty quick. Other than that we glimpsed a lion a couple of times one evening at a waterhole and there were vast herds of springbok and zebra everywhere plus the usual assortment of giraffe, elephant, oryx, hyaena and the list goes on (and on…).
We are now in Windhoek again waiting to catch the bus tonight to Livingstone, Zambia to check out Victoria Falls. It is a 20 hour bus ride but we are on the luxury bus – a two story greyhound style bus – which hopefully means we won’t be sharing our seats with too much livestock. We also part ways with the red rocket today. The little beast survived its ordeal surprisingly well, although it took a kind chap at the backpackers nearly and hour and half to clean it last night for the princely sum of AUS$8. We felt a bit bad so gave him our esky, folder chairs and our left over supplies which he was pretty happy to take. We worked out that we have driven almost exactly 11,000 km over the last 6 weeks and SA and Namibia. Not a bad effort and I think we have definitely got our moneys worth from our two hire cars.
Friday, August 28, 2009
More Piccies
Bushman Carvings
Mmmmm, pork steak.....
Sandboarding Namibia
Monkey Gland Sauce and Borewoers - lunch of champions.
Etosha leopard spotting 
Mouse for dinner anyone? Lesotho.
Shark bait, seved chilled.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Tasty Kudu.
We are currently back in Swakopmund once again and caught up with Peter Waggit and Sharon Paulka yesterday for a few beers and are meeting them a little later this evening for dinner. My phone is working again which is handy.
We have a much more normal backpackers lodge this time. Our last visit we stayed at the Alternative Space – the prime decoration being nude pictures of the hostess – at least 14 just in our living area with another collection in the library. Aside from that it was actually a really nice B&B.
I have decided that I like African conservation/wildlife appreciation. At a recent guest farm we camped at they had a selection of walks named after different animals found on the property. We elected to do the Kudu walk, helpfully marked with Kudu skulls nailed to posts along the path to ensure you didn’t get lost. Having successfully followed the Kudu skulls for several km we returned to camp for a tasty feed of Kudu steak grilled over an open fire. How good is that?! Once you have finished admiring the wildlife you can return to camp and eat it. Imagine that in Kakadu. Follow the wallaby heads up the hill, take your pictures, make that girly “oooaaahhh” noise, and when you return we’ll throw one on the fire for dinner.
Anyway I digress. Since our last posting we have visited the Kolmanskop Ghost town just east of Luderitz after spending a lovely night camped at Shark Island (a bare rock sticking out into the Atlantic). We spent most of the evening hiding from the cold wind in a local pub.
We then headed south and visited the famed Fish River Canyon, which was very impressive – and also very windy and cold with even a bit of rain. The camp ground left a little to be desired with a shortage of beer, showers, beer, hot water, beer, firewood, beer and day walks into the canyon are not allowed for some strange reason which was not explained – so we decided to bring our schedule forward a few days and head back north.
We stopped for the night in Rehoboth at the Reho spa. Driving into the camp ground we discovered it was completely deserted which was a little strange. It worked out well however as the spa bit was a local hot spring piped into a large indoor pool which the security guard opened up for us. After dinner we spent the evening floating around in lovely 38 degree water by ourselves as the temperature outside slid down to around 4 degrees.
Back in Swakopmund, this morning we headed out sandboarding in the dunes. Very cool, very sandy, and very hard work. I walked up a 90m sand dune 9 times and definitely eared the beer at the end. Great fun and very similar to snow boarding.
From Swakopmund we are heading for Etosha in a few days and have booked a bus to Livingston in Zambia for the 28th August to check out Victoria Falls.
The red rocket continues to charge along with only one flat tyre so far. The little beast is growing on us and it will be (almost) sad to leave it behind!
Namibia has been a very different experience than South Africa – prices have gone up markedly since our book was written and Mike and Brian traveled through here. A nights camping at Fish River cost us US$50 and the facilities were crap. You really get the feeling that the government just wants to fleece tourists out of as much cash as possible, for as few services as possible and really doesn’t give a sh*t if you enjoy your time here or not. It is a shame as the country is almost unbelievably spectacular, but being milked as a cash cow at every turn takes the gloss off a bit. In any case, we are still loving it and wouldn’t have missed it.
We have a much more normal backpackers lodge this time. Our last visit we stayed at the Alternative Space – the prime decoration being nude pictures of the hostess – at least 14 just in our living area with another collection in the library. Aside from that it was actually a really nice B&B.
I have decided that I like African conservation/wildlife appreciation. At a recent guest farm we camped at they had a selection of walks named after different animals found on the property. We elected to do the Kudu walk, helpfully marked with Kudu skulls nailed to posts along the path to ensure you didn’t get lost. Having successfully followed the Kudu skulls for several km we returned to camp for a tasty feed of Kudu steak grilled over an open fire. How good is that?! Once you have finished admiring the wildlife you can return to camp and eat it. Imagine that in Kakadu. Follow the wallaby heads up the hill, take your pictures, make that girly “oooaaahhh” noise, and when you return we’ll throw one on the fire for dinner.
Anyway I digress. Since our last posting we have visited the Kolmanskop Ghost town just east of Luderitz after spending a lovely night camped at Shark Island (a bare rock sticking out into the Atlantic). We spent most of the evening hiding from the cold wind in a local pub.
We then headed south and visited the famed Fish River Canyon, which was very impressive – and also very windy and cold with even a bit of rain. The camp ground left a little to be desired with a shortage of beer, showers, beer, hot water, beer, firewood, beer and day walks into the canyon are not allowed for some strange reason which was not explained – so we decided to bring our schedule forward a few days and head back north.
We stopped for the night in Rehoboth at the Reho spa. Driving into the camp ground we discovered it was completely deserted which was a little strange. It worked out well however as the spa bit was a local hot spring piped into a large indoor pool which the security guard opened up for us. After dinner we spent the evening floating around in lovely 38 degree water by ourselves as the temperature outside slid down to around 4 degrees.
Back in Swakopmund, this morning we headed out sandboarding in the dunes. Very cool, very sandy, and very hard work. I walked up a 90m sand dune 9 times and definitely eared the beer at the end. Great fun and very similar to snow boarding.
From Swakopmund we are heading for Etosha in a few days and have booked a bus to Livingston in Zambia for the 28th August to check out Victoria Falls.
The red rocket continues to charge along with only one flat tyre so far. The little beast is growing on us and it will be (almost) sad to leave it behind!
Namibia has been a very different experience than South Africa – prices have gone up markedly since our book was written and Mike and Brian traveled through here. A nights camping at Fish River cost us US$50 and the facilities were crap. You really get the feeling that the government just wants to fleece tourists out of as much cash as possible, for as few services as possible and really doesn’t give a sh*t if you enjoy your time here or not. It is a shame as the country is almost unbelievably spectacular, but being milked as a cash cow at every turn takes the gloss off a bit. In any case, we are still loving it and wouldn’t have missed it.
Some Piccies
Sandboarding in Swakopmund
Nicole at Fish River Canyon
Sossusvlei dune
Nicole at Fish River Canyon
Sossusvlei duneWhat Elephant?
The Red Rocket in the Namib.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Red Rocket Vs the Namib
We arrived in Windhoek to collect our hire car and are now the proud temporary owners of a shiny red VW Citi. Whilst it is a pretty new car, I think the rest of the world stopped making them in the 1970's for good reason, and the design has changed little since then. In the handling and spec level it is more like a little red tractor, but that probably isn't a bad thing since we have given it a belting on hundreds of km of gravel roads already - as well as doing a good impersonation of a little red grader by shaving the top off the occasional rock. It also sucks in dust like a vacuum cleaner, but it was cheap! Still, most of the important parts are still attached and we are now in Luderitz and back on the bitumen so round one to the Red Rocket, but there is still plenty of time for the Namib desert roads to get their own back!
We headed directly from Windhoek to Swakopmund as I was due to visit the Rossing Uranium Mine on 12 August. They were a friendly crew and I had an interesting few hours there poking around whilst Nicole wandered the streets of Swakopmund. We then headed south into the Namib Desert - and a more arid, alien landscape you cannot imagine. They claim this is the oldest and driest desert on earth and I am inclined to believe them! It is a mix of bare rocky mountains, massive dunes and bare rocky plains. I've never seen anything quite like it - surreal and very empty even by Australian standards.
We spent a day visiting the dunes at Sossusvlei which was amazing on a few levels. It initially resembled the Sossusvlei circus - we had to line up to enter, line up for a permit and then line up again to get through another gate. We could have camped there, except the fees are now AUS$100 per night just for a camp site!! We stayed elsewhere. Still, the dunes really are amazing - up to 300m high - and to walk along the dry clay pan surrounded by the mountains of red sand is something else. We attempted to climb one of the taller dunes, but managed to ascend a foothill and contented ourselves with collapsing at the summit of that instead.
We took another couple of days to make our way from there to Luderitz (where we are now), with two really nice camping sites on the way. This afternoon we took a drive around the local peninsula and managed to spot some flamingos, sea lions, dolphins and lots of rocks, but sadly for Nicole we are yet to find a diamond, although apparently they are all over the place here.
For some reason my mobile is not working in Namibia. Telstra helpfully provide a cheap help number, but it is a bit hard to call without a phone (payphones attract international rates). I'm still trying to get it sorted, but for the moment I won't be getting any text messages.
We headed directly from Windhoek to Swakopmund as I was due to visit the Rossing Uranium Mine on 12 August. They were a friendly crew and I had an interesting few hours there poking around whilst Nicole wandered the streets of Swakopmund. We then headed south into the Namib Desert - and a more arid, alien landscape you cannot imagine. They claim this is the oldest and driest desert on earth and I am inclined to believe them! It is a mix of bare rocky mountains, massive dunes and bare rocky plains. I've never seen anything quite like it - surreal and very empty even by Australian standards.
We spent a day visiting the dunes at Sossusvlei which was amazing on a few levels. It initially resembled the Sossusvlei circus - we had to line up to enter, line up for a permit and then line up again to get through another gate. We could have camped there, except the fees are now AUS$100 per night just for a camp site!! We stayed elsewhere. Still, the dunes really are amazing - up to 300m high - and to walk along the dry clay pan surrounded by the mountains of red sand is something else. We attempted to climb one of the taller dunes, but managed to ascend a foothill and contented ourselves with collapsing at the summit of that instead.
We took another couple of days to make our way from there to Luderitz (where we are now), with two really nice camping sites on the way. This afternoon we took a drive around the local peninsula and managed to spot some flamingos, sea lions, dolphins and lots of rocks, but sadly for Nicole we are yet to find a diamond, although apparently they are all over the place here.
For some reason my mobile is not working in Namibia. Telstra helpfully provide a cheap help number, but it is a bit hard to call without a phone (payphones attract international rates). I'm still trying to get it sorted, but for the moment I won't be getting any text messages.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Kruger Critters
For clarification bunny-chow has nothing to do with rabbits, but is curry served in a hollowed out loaf of bread. No idea where the name came from, but it is a fine idea.
We have spent the last week on safari spotting all sorts of critters across several national parks, most notably Kruger where we spent 5 days and were lucky enough to spot the 'Big 5' (lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo) all in the one day. Spotting cats in Kruger is very easy - you drive along until you find a traffic jam and then try and see what everyone is looking at. Unfortunately we didn't have the most commanding view from our Yaris, but elephant do look more impressive when you are only 3 feet off the ground! We managed to time our visit to Kruger with a local holiday so it was pretty packed and we weren't able to camp where we had intended - we ended up in the 3 different camp grounds, at almost opposite ends of the park. It took us 10 hours to drive from Crocodile Bridge in the south to Mopani on our second day - but it worked out well as we got to see much more of the park than we otherwise would have. We were also lucky enough to see lions with a kill - chasing vultures around and being generally very selfish... We were also really lucky to see two cheetah next to the road on one of the south African parks game drives we took. They had just been feeding and were in no rush to go anywhere so we got a really good close look at them. We also did an evening drive with spotlights which was pretty cool. I've done a lot of spotlighting, but don't normally come across elephants, serval and other interesting critters including a chameleon. In short, Kruger was fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone in this part of the world - it is weird to be able to drive around the (almost Australian) bush in your car and then there is an elephant or giraffe in the middle of the road!
After Kruger we spent two nights in the Blyde River Canyon region. Pretty spectacular with the highveld plateau dropping 1000m down to the lowveld plains. Looks very similar to our sandstone escarpment country in Kakadu, just on a massive scale.
We are currently in the lounge at the Jo'berg airport awaiting our flight to Windhoek in Namibia. We managed to survive Jo'berg without getting mugged, although we were very nearly taken out on the freeway coming into town by some f*$kwit who though it was a good idea to just drive out into a stream of traffic moving at +100km/hr. The south african roads are a very dangerous combination of third world lack of rules with first world quaility roads - meaning the normal traffic chaos of the third world all happens at 150km/hr. The wonder isn't that so many people are killed, but that so many survive!
When we hit Namibia this afternoon we are heading straight to Swakopmund as I am working tomorrow (for one day) and going on a visit of the Rossing Uranium Mine. After that we don't really have a firm plan yet but I guess it is about time we came up with one!
We have spent the last week on safari spotting all sorts of critters across several national parks, most notably Kruger where we spent 5 days and were lucky enough to spot the 'Big 5' (lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo) all in the one day. Spotting cats in Kruger is very easy - you drive along until you find a traffic jam and then try and see what everyone is looking at. Unfortunately we didn't have the most commanding view from our Yaris, but elephant do look more impressive when you are only 3 feet off the ground! We managed to time our visit to Kruger with a local holiday so it was pretty packed and we weren't able to camp where we had intended - we ended up in the 3 different camp grounds, at almost opposite ends of the park. It took us 10 hours to drive from Crocodile Bridge in the south to Mopani on our second day - but it worked out well as we got to see much more of the park than we otherwise would have. We were also lucky enough to see lions with a kill - chasing vultures around and being generally very selfish... We were also really lucky to see two cheetah next to the road on one of the south African parks game drives we took. They had just been feeding and were in no rush to go anywhere so we got a really good close look at them. We also did an evening drive with spotlights which was pretty cool. I've done a lot of spotlighting, but don't normally come across elephants, serval and other interesting critters including a chameleon. In short, Kruger was fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone in this part of the world - it is weird to be able to drive around the (almost Australian) bush in your car and then there is an elephant or giraffe in the middle of the road!
After Kruger we spent two nights in the Blyde River Canyon region. Pretty spectacular with the highveld plateau dropping 1000m down to the lowveld plains. Looks very similar to our sandstone escarpment country in Kakadu, just on a massive scale.
We are currently in the lounge at the Jo'berg airport awaiting our flight to Windhoek in Namibia. We managed to survive Jo'berg without getting mugged, although we were very nearly taken out on the freeway coming into town by some f*$kwit who though it was a good idea to just drive out into a stream of traffic moving at +100km/hr. The south african roads are a very dangerous combination of third world lack of rules with first world quaility roads - meaning the normal traffic chaos of the third world all happens at 150km/hr. The wonder isn't that so many people are killed, but that so many survive!
When we hit Namibia this afternoon we are heading straight to Swakopmund as I am working tomorrow (for one day) and going on a visit of the Rossing Uranium Mine. After that we don't really have a firm plan yet but I guess it is about time we came up with one!
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Bunny-chow is all good!
We are currently hippo spotting in St Lucia wetland park - having been on a lagoon cruise earlier today on which we saw plenty of hippos, we just found some next to our camp ground anyway! We spent the previous few days in the Drakensburg including a pretty cool (literally) trip across the border into Lesotho, the worlds highest country. The locals all get around wearing blankets, not a bad idea since there was still ice on the ground at midday. We also did a bit of walking to check out the view in Royal Natal National Park which was spectacular to say the least, if not a little hazy unfortunately. Our last day in the Drakensburg was a bit of a shambles with some useful African directions meaning we missed out on a look at the Giant's Castle. No harm done we made up for it with R25 Bunny-chow (no rabbits were harmed) and R9 beers at our camp ground that night!
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